ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOrATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                        119

    When we got around to the ground campaign, I went around to each one of
my commanders and said, "Okay.       This is the time to start earning your flight
pay.  Now we have Marines in contact. We have to start pressing." But it was
also the right time to do that because we had beaten down the air defense
system.   We learned from the A-i Os that, as soon as somebody shoots at you,
turn and rock in, and dump on him.    So if we got some AAA out of some area,
we'd jump on that guy right away and pound him.    Because of that, as soon as
the first guy started to turn on him, they'd stop shooting.     You're always
learning on the battlefield.
    But we stayed high.  We didn't do any of the pop-ups [low-level run-in
followed by a sharp pitch-up to roll-in altitude] that we practiced for so many
years.

Proceedings: What about the Cobras and the OV-10s supporting the ground
troops? What was their experience with AAA and band-held SAMS? What kind
of air defense was up close to the front lines?

Moore: They really lucked out. Because of the smoke and haze, I've got to tell
you that we fought the ground campaign over the worst four flying days of the
whole war.   Two things happened to us. First, General Schwarzkopf and every
weather guy in Southwest Asia promised us 72 hours of good weather, but we
probably didn't get 72 minutes.  The most important thing that happened was
that the wind changed; instead of coming out of the northwest, it was out of the
southeast.  I walked out of my trailer about 0200 on G-Day and the wind was
blowing in my face.   I just looked up at the sky and said, "Hey, are you
listening up there? We need good weather.
    But the wind-shift helped us. The two large oil fields on fire are awesome.
I've walked the ground, I flew it in a helicopter, I flew it in fixed-wing, and it
didn't matter whether you saw it left, right, center, upwind, downwind, it is an
awesome sight--and the wind blew all that smoke right back across the
battlefield.

Proceedings: How long did the wind hold for you there?

Moore: It held the whole four days. In fact, it held till about day six or so after
the campaign started, and then started blowing back again. So if you look at the
battlefield, where those oil fires were, I was betting that I would have that
northwest wind and that it would blow the smoke, so that after the 1st and 2d
Division came out of their second breach the area that they would go into would
be clear of smoke, where I could really influence the action and give them
intelligence and lots of air support. Well, the weather changed that.  I had six
or eight Cobras air-taxiing down highways in Kuwait with their landing lights
on to get into the 1st and 2d Division area to help them out.   That's how bad
it was.
    Second, there was a high-altitude jet stream that just stayed there.  About
every four to six hours, the weather would go down, then come up, then go